Friday, February 26, 2016

NOTE: The name appears
with a variety of spellings in English-language news reports: “Skoublinska,”
Skoblinska,” “Skonblinska,” “Skublinski,” “Stysinski.” The following articles
contain the spellings used in the original print edition, but the same
“Marianne Skoublinska” has been chosen for use in The Unknown History of MISANDRY as the standard name, since the
report using that spelling includes a first name.”

New information: A Polish visitor has been kind enough to provide the correct spelling: Marianna Skublińska.

Some brief reports on this case did not mention any name
such as this one: “A woman concerned in baby farming at
Warsaw has been charged with murdering seventy-five infants. She was sentenced
to three years' imprisonment.” [“Extensive Baby Farming - 76 Infants Murdered.” The Bathurst Free Press and Mining
Journal (NSW, Australia), Apr. 2, 1890, p. 3]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 6): A horrible series of crimes has been discovered at Warsaw. A fire at an old
house in Sienna-street had been extinguished by the brigade, when some firemen
who had been left to prevent any mischief from stray sparks discovered a
child’s corpse beneath the floor; two other similar discoveries were made soon
after, and finally eight bodies were found beneath the floor of one room. The Chroniclecorrespondent at Vienna says that on
some partitions and a cupboard being pulled down, six more bodies of children
were brought to light [1+2+8+6=17]. An inmate of the house, a midwife named
Skoblinska, has been arrested on suspicion of having killed and buried the
infants. As she had been living in the house only four months the police are
engaged in making investigations into her antecedents. Skoblinska shared her
apartment with her sister. Each of the women had a grown-up daughter. The other
three women were also arrested on suspicion of being implicated with
Skoblinska. It is stated that in all fifty bodies have been found.

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 6): According to advices from Warsaw
some details have now come to light about the dreadful child murders committed
there by the midwife Skublinski and some other women who have already been
arrested. Skublinski resided in an attic, that she secretly received young
illegitimate children “to nurse,” as she said. In reality, she, with several
other women, carried on a regular trade in murdering infants. The attention of
the police had already been drawn to this woman, and an unexpected examination
of the house revealed several cradles with two and three babies in each.

Now, as Skublinski had no right to receive mothers and
new-born children, she had to promise that from thenceforth she would take no
more young infants into her house. Notwithstanding this, the police on a
subsequent occasion found three little babies, and she was, in consequence,
summoned, and the hearing was fixed for the 19th inst. [in February,
apparently, rather than May as stated here] before the justice of the peace.
During the night of the 17th she set fire to her lodging, after having first
murdered the children committed to her charge.

Then this inhuman woman went and stood in the yard of the
house among the excited crowd and quietly waited to see what would happen. As
the house was only built of wood, she evidently hoped it would be completely
destroyed. But one of the inmates of the house suddenly remembered the woman in
the garret and her charges, and called out to the firemen to save the children.

Then Skubliuski was for the first time soon standing in the
yard, and when she was asked if the children were already saved, she answered
that they were no longer with her. In the meanwhile, the firemen had so far
succeeded in subduing the fire that one of them penetrated into Skublinski’s
lodging, and, not knowing what she had said, immediately began to search for
the children. He soon found one little corpse, and then two more.

They wore taken down to the yard, and a doctor who happened
to be present declared that the children were not choked by smoke, but a crime
had been perpetrated. Then the police came forward and four more corpses were
discovered, on one of which were distinct traces of the skull having been
battered in. Consequently Skublinski and the other women were arrested.

FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 6): The woman baby-farmer,
Stysinski, who is believed to have disposed of seventy-five babies during the
last few years, has just been sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Her baby
farm, or rather graveyard, became known to the police a month ago through her
setting fire to her cottage, containing five little children, in order to
obtain the amount of the insurance on her property. At the trial it was proved
that not a single child which was entrusted to her care and entered her den
ever left her house alive. It was also shown that she made two charges for
taking care of children, fifteen roubles for allowing the baby to die in a few
weeks, and twenty for procuring its death within a day or two. She frequently
threw the bodies of the children to her pigs, and boasted of the fattest pigs
in the district on account of the exceptionally good feed she provided for
them, in spite of all the evidence, she could not be convicted of murder.

FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 6): In our last number we mentioned
the case ofSkonblinska, a baby farmer
in Warsaw, who was tried lately for causing the deaths of about seventy
children. speaking of the death sentence lately pronounced upon Sophie Günzbourg,
the New York Volks-Zeitung remarks: “For
a young girl who is supposed to have had the intention of attempting the life
of the Tzar – the gallows; for the murderess of so many children – three years
penal servitude. After that, who can reproach the Nihilists for what the do?”

[Untitled, Free Russia, (The Organ of the English Society of
Friends of Russian Freedom, American Edition), (New York, N.Y.), Apr. 1891, p.
6]

FULL TEXT (Article 6 of 6): At the examination of the woman
Skooblinsky, lately arrested at Warsaw, details were brought out which reveal
to what a horrible extent baby farming is carried on in Russia [Poland was
controlled by Russia at the time]. The details induce one to believe that in
the matter of surreptitiously disposing ofinfants Russia is not very much better than China, where the Herodian
custom is supposed to flourish best – or worst. It is said that Count Tolstoi,
learning of these horrible practices, was inspired to write his “Kreutzer
Sonata,” in which he hurled this piece of scorn at the present civilization:

What terrible unveracity passes current nowadays respecting
children! Children, forsooth, are a blessing from God. Children are a joy. Now
all this is a lie. This was so in times gone by; but it is not true in our
days; nothing like it is true. Children are felt to be a scourge. This they are,
and nothing more.”

The wildest excitement prevailed in some parts of Russia on the publication of
the woman’s testimony, and the most serious of the papers called such homes as
hers “angel factories.” Her method was like that of all of her class. ‘A common
servant-woman gives herself out for a licensed midwife, opens what she
grandiloquently terms an establishment for the bringing up of children in
Warsaw, but which is, in plain truth, a filthy hut on the outskirts of the
city, in which they are gradually done to death – and begins business without
more ado. To the tender mercies of this monster mothers unhesitatingly confide
their babies, paying her in advance for her trouble. In a short time her name
and fame spread far and wide, and her clientele grows more numerous and more
varied, including individuals; or families placed by birth or fortune far out
of the reach of want. Unable to attend alone to the various departments of this
lucrative occupation, she has recourse to the principle of the division of
labor, hiring a sharp, cynical woman of loose character to furnish the
establishment with “raw material.”

Besides these colleagues, Shooblinsky gave fees to her
son-in-law to forge doctors’ certificates of death from natural causes;
contracted with a carpenter to receive the little corpses, and keep them till a
sufficient number accumulated to make it worth while to bury them, when it
became his duty to assist her in chopping them up into little bits and packing
them neatly into a spacious coffin of his own make. They were then buried by a
half idiot boy who lived with Skooblinsky.

In Russia one can do nothing, good or bad, without a special
authorization from the paternal authorities, and from this universal rule baby
farming is not excepted. Hence the police, having received an inkling of what
was going on, and knowing that Skooblinsky had been tried some twelve months
previously for infanticide and acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence,” paid
her a visit one day and found her “nursing four children,” whom they ordered
her to return to their parents, seeing that she had no license to carry on the
business of baby farmer. To this she assented, but instead of sending them back
to their mothers she dispatched them.

The next day all the four children left for a better world,
and that night the boy heard her call out to her son-in-law: “I say, Koonya,
take away those puppies; they’re dead.” They had been systematically starved to
death, a method of disposing of them which set her right in the eyes of the law,
and en abled her to say to the procurator: “I did not kill them. Theydied, poor things, because they were very
weak. My calling was an honest one.”

The fathers and mothers who in trusted their children to
this woman will never be discovered, for Skooblinsky made it a point never to
inquire whence they came, what position they occupied, or even their names. In
ordinary times $10 was the charge, but whenever business grew brisk” it was
raised to a much higher sum, and lowered to $2.50 when it was un usually slack.
Maybe the baby loses little in dying, for an illegitimate child in Russia is
generally subjected for the term of natural life to cruel treatment. It is
stripped of certain of its civil rights and is scoffed and sneered at with
impunity in season and out of season, and made the butt of every coarse jester
that comes along.

He bears about in his passport, like Cain on his forehead,
the indelible mark that brands him as a fugitive and a vagabond. The following
case, taken from the Law Journal of St. Petersburg, is a type:

The victim was the illegitimate daughter of a Russian
nobleman, idolized by her father, who gave her a fine education. This
nobleman’s death put an end to the education when the daughter was just turned
sixteen. She was full of life and energy, shrank from no kind of labor, and
resolved to win her way upward by her own unaided efforts. The reception she
met with, however, on her first application for employment proved a wet blanket
to her ardor.

“Have you a legal passport?” she was asked. ‘“No, I am an
illegitimate child, but it’s not the passport that will do the work, but
myself, and I am here.” “Yes, no doubt; but that is not enough. A Russian
without a passport is like the sea without waier. There is no thoroughfare for
the likes of you. Good-by.”

Bewildered, she ran hither and thither, endeavoring to
obtain a passport, but in vain. Some officials promised, others shook rudely
off, and others threatened her with imprisonment and Siberia for vagrancy.
Still, however, she shifted as well as she could under the circumstances,
making head against all difficulties and just keeping body and soul together.

At last a young man. full of admiration for her noble
qualities, asked for her heart and her hand. The harbor of rest was in sight.
So it seemed at first, but in reality this proved to be only a respite. here is
your passport? You have none? Marriage is impossible without one. No priest can
perform the ceremony for you.

Tears, sighs and earnest entreaties purchased pity and promise,
but no remedy.

Her union with her bridegroom was cemented by love but not
hallowed by religion, the legislator, forbidding the priest to pronounce a
benediction. This was bad, but not the worst. A very demon seemed to preside
over her destiny, for soon after the birth of her first child her helpmate
died, and she was left alone in the world with despair for a guide and not even
a passport to legalize a life of misery. Hundreds of similar Russian
illegitimate children lose but little when they lose life.

Mothers, on the other hand, think that they would lose a
great deal if they had to keep their children alive, and public opinion points
the same way, for Russian juries never convict a mother who is guilty of
nothing worse than killing her illegitimate offspring.

There are two colossal foundling asylums in Russia one in
St. Petersburg, and the other In Moscow and the law refuses to countenance the
opening of other similar institutions in the provinces; Now the maintenance of
these two houses costs £300,000 a year.

These foundling institutions have existed for over 125
years, and have taken in during that time 1,300,000 children. The number
ofthose who died before completingthe first year of his life was 990,303, or 77
per-cent of the total. Of the remainder, 150,000 more died before leaving the
asylum, so that only 155,268 children passed through the fiery ordeaI.

These figures give one only a very imperfect idea of the total number of
children who die in Russia from avoidable causes. A numerous profession exists
in the provinces of Russia, the members of which are needy women, endowed with
an intuition enabling them to scent out all those mothers who desire to get
their children put into the Moscow or the St. Petersburg asylum for foundlings.

They collect the little waifs, pack them in baskets (six or
eight in one basket), stow them away under the seats of the third-class railway
carriages, along with eggs, butter, rags and refuse and those who survive this
first life’s journay are deposited at the front gates ofthe foundling asylums. Eighty-eight per cent
of these are in due time carted out of the back gates in the shape of little
corpses.

Child-murder is too common in Russia to excite much comment.
The Moscow Gazette recently had this:

“The Seventh department of the Moscow court of assizes tried
the female cook, Riva Blatt, eighteen years old, for the murder of her child.
She rolled it up in a napkin and threw it into a hole that she had dug out for
the purpose.

As she was caught in flagrante delictu, the child was taken
out alive, but it died very soon after from the effects. The jury found her
innocent.

[“Unwelcome Babies, And How They Are Got Out of the Way in
Frigid Russia. - A “Little Angel Factory” About Which Awful Stories “ - Are
Told. Where the Little Ones Are Starved to Death and Cut in Pieces. - A Woman
Caught Killing Her Child Found Innocent by a Jury.” St. Paul Daily Globe (Mn.),
Jul. 14, 1890, p. 5]

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

FULL TEXT: A triple-poisoning case is just now causing
great excitement among the Neapolitans. Two sisters – Elizabeth Altrui and
Maddalena Loffredo – lived with their husbands – Guiliano and Angelo – at the
little town of San Pietro. One day a thief escaping from justice with a large
sum of money he had stolen took refuge in their house, and a few days after he
died suddenly. Two or three months had elapsed, when Guiliano fell ill of a
mysterious internal complaint, and his wife and sisters floated the report that
he was suffering from cholera. His death soon followed, but excited no
particular comment, and suspicion was not aroused till a woman called Michela’s
mother, who had merely sipped the same beverage, escaped after suffering great
agony. The sisters and Toffredo were at once arrested on the charge of triple
assassination, a post-mortem examination having shown beyond doubt that they had
poisoned their victims with arsenic.

This
US case is of particular interest in that all parties are Hungarian
immigrants. Thus the Veras case ought to be compared with the serial
murder syndicates operating in Hungary up till the early 1930s. (See:
Husband-Killing Syndicates)

Some news sources use other spellings “Veras, Vera,” but
“Veras” seems to be the correct spelling.

***

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 9): Specters of nine strange deaths stalked Mrs. Rose
Veres, weazened “Witch of Delray," today as detectives questioned her
about the death of a tenth man in her home within the last 10 years. Mrs. Veres
vigorously denied implication in the death of Steven Mak, 68,. ostensibly of a
fall from a ladder.

~ REFUSES TO TALK IN ENGLISH. ~

Her denials came through a Hungarian Interpreter after the
tight-lipped woman insisted she could not answer in English, although John
Walker, negro neighbor, said she confessed to him that Mak had been slain.

The woman was to appear in court today on a habeas corpus
writ similar to one for her 18-year-old son, William, held in connection with
stories that he had participated with his mother in an alleged beating of Mak
that preceded his plunge from an attic window.

Police checking the strange death record of the woman's last
10 years learned that three of her husbands were among the 10 deaths. Her
attorney, Frank W. Kenney. Jr., said Mak was another husband. The fatal roster
included:

John Toth, carbon monoxide poisoning.

Stephen Flash, alcoholism.

John Kolachl, intestinal ailment. Garbor Veres, died with
Toth.

John Norvay, undetermined.

Louis Kulacs, undetermined. Alex Porezios, undetermined.

John Skrivan, said to have hanged himself in the home.

Steve Sebastian, supposed alcoholic.

~ Many Neighborhood Rumors. ~

Information concerning the deaths was tangled and vague,
police said, because of long-standing neighborhood rumors about strange events
in the Veres home.

Detective Lieutenant Rudolph H. Hosfelt today revealed that
Mak had been under partial police protection since July 6 when neighbors,
reported be was being beaten in the basement of the home. A week ago, Hosfelt
said, police quieted a disturbance in the Veres home upon complaint of a
neighbor and that Mak told him Mrs. Veres had given him some
"medicine," which he believed was poison, to get insurance drawn in
her favor.

A post-mortem was to be held today on Mak’s body.

[“Detroit Woman Questioned About Tenth Man's Death In Her
Home In Ten Years,” The News-Herald (Franklin and Oil City, Pa.), Aug. 26,
1931, p. 1]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 9): Detroit - A mother and her son were held by police today following the death by a fall from a window
of a roomer in their home and the subsequent discovery by police that
ten men, on most of whom the woman held insurance policies, had died in
her rooming house during the past eight years.

The woman, Mrs. Rose Veras, 48, whose rooming house is in this city’s Hungarian colony, is held on a technical charge of homicide. Her son, William, 18, was arrested for investigation.

The death of Steve Mak, 68, aroomer at Mrs. Veras’ home openedthe police investigation. Mrs. Verastold police Mak fell from a ladderwhile repairing an attic window,other witnesses said Mak was notat work on a ladder, and that it appeared he had been pushed from the window.

George M. Stutz, assistant prosecuting attorney, said he had learned there was one valid insurance policy on Mak’s life, for $4,000, of
which Mrs. Veras was the beneficiary. He said he had learned Mrs. Veras
recently borrowed money to make a payment on the policy.

~ Says It’s Customary ~

Mrs. Veras told police it was customary in the Hungarian colony for a landlady to insure her roomers in her behalf. Police said 75 policies
were found in her home. They expressed the belief that several of them
had been made out in her favor by most of the ten men whose deaths
occurred in her house since 1923.

Detective
Lieutenant John Whitman said he had learned Mrs. Veras paid the funeral
expenses of seven of the men who died at her house.

Police
examined their records to determine the cause of the death of the ten,
and announced that post mortems had been held on the bodies of two who
died of alcoholism, and that no evidence of criminal activities had been
found.

The tenmen who died in Mrs. Veras’ home, they said, were Hungarian.

~ Freedom Delayed ~

Frank
M. Kenney, Mrs. Veras’ attorney, presented a writ of habeas corpus for
the release of Mrs. Veras and her son, returnable today. Instead of
dismissing the writ, as he first announced. Recorders Judge Henry S.
Sweeney extended the time to Thursday, saying he desired to give the
police “all the time they want in investigating the case.”

Kenney
declared the action against Mrs. Veras to be the result of neighborhood
gossip. He said the previous deaths had been investigated and showed no
criminal activity.

Detectives
investigating Mrs. Veras’ activities said she had a record of six
previous arrests, but no convictions. One of the arrests, they said, was
for embezzlement.

FULL
TEXT: (Article 3 of 9): Detroit – Four persons were in custody today as
authorities sought to learn whether the deaths of ten men over a period
of eight years in Mrs. Rose Veras’ rooming house were from natural
causes or violence.

~ Find 75 Policies ~

Mrs.
Veras, the 48-year-old Hungarian immigrant who held insurance policies
on the ten who died, has been in custody since Tuesday on a technical
charge of murder. Other policies, 75 in all, were found by officers in
her home and investigators were attempting to learn the fate of the
insured.

The
list of deaths under investigation had reached 11 today, with discovery
that Valet Peterman, 68, a boarder in the Veras home, died shortly
after moving to another house.

Sam
Denyen who, police said, lived in the Veras home until two weeks ago,
was arrested in Logan, W. Va., late yesterday and a detective left last
night to question him. Mrs. Veras’ 15-year old son, Gaber, was detained
for questioning yesterday. Another son, William, 18, has been held for
several days.

~ Pushed Out of Window? ~

The
investigation was inspired by the death of Steve Mak, a roomer, Tuesday
morning from injuries received in a fall. Mrs. Veras said he fell while
working on a ladder.

Neighbors
who claimed to have witnessed his fall, told police he appeared to have
been pushed from an attic window and drugged at the time.

FULL
TEXT (Article 4 of 9): Detroit, Aug. 31 – Duncan C. McRae, assistant
prosecutor, announced today that Mrs. Rose Veras, rooming house
proprietor, held on a technical charge of homicide following the death
during the past eight years of 12 men in her home, had confessed to “a
party not connected with the police department,” that she pushed one of
the men from an attic window, the fall causing his death.

McCrae
said that the woman told the person whose name was not revealed by
police that she pushed Stephen Mak, the last of the 12 men to die, from
an attic window after attempts to poison him has failed.

~ Had 75 Policies. ~

Harry
S. Toy, prosecuting attorney, said he would not reveal how the
confession was obtained. He said that for reasons he “did not care to
disclose” the person’s identity, which would not be revealed at present.

Seventy-five
life insurance policies were found in Mrs. Veras’ home, when she was
arrested, on the lives of the men who died in her home. Officials said
that Mrs. Veras held at last $6400 insurance on the life of Mak.

~ Denies Others. ~

McCrae
said the woman denied any complicity in any of the other deaths in her
home, but had admitted she killed Mak to obtain insurance money of which
she was the beneficiary. She said she held seven policies on Mak’s life
and that she paid the premiums on all of them.

According
to McCrae, Mrs. Veras confessed she tried to poison Mak by putting lye
in his coffee and liquor that he drank, but when she found he was not
“dying fast enough” she lured him up a ladder, placed at the side of her
home, urging him to enter an attic window and then pushed him from the
window. Mak died the day following the fall from the window.

FULL
TEXT (Article 5 of 9): Detroit. Sept. 1.—After intermittent grilling of more than 100 hours.
Mrs. Rose Veres. 48, so-called “Witch Widow.” of Medina street where her
unkempt boarding house is located, today broke down andconfessed to killing one of the 12 men who
died under what police alleged were incriminating circumstances during the past
eight years. She is charged with murder and faces life imprisonment.

According
to Assistant Prosecutor; Duncan McCrea, in charge of the weird case, the widow
said:

“I
was hard up and needed the insurance money on the man. I tried to poison him
twice but he didn’t die, so I pushed him out of the attic window.”

Her
victim was Steven Mak, 68-year-old roomer, whose death led to the probe which
disclosed that other men had died “mysteriously” in her boarding house.

FULL
TEXT: (Article 6 of 9): Detroit, Sept. 2. – Officers investigating the
death of Steve Male and eleven other lodgers in Mrs. Rose Veras’ rooming
house said tonight a witness had told them he saw Mak pushed from an
attic window of the rooming house.

“A
pair of arms” shoved Mak from the window, they quoted George Halasz,
the witness, as saying, and a moment later Mrs. Veras peered out. Mak
died August 28 of injuries suffered in the fall.

Halasz,
49, and a former lodger in the rooming house conducted by the
48-year-old woman, said he had gone to the house to see a man rooming
there and was waiting outside when he saw Mak fall to his death. Halasz
also was quoted as saying he moved out of the rooming house because Mrs.
Veras sought to take out an insurance policy on his life, naming her as
beneficiary.

Mrs.
Veras had paid premiums on $2,600 of insurance on Mak’s life and on
seventy-five other policies, many of them on the lives of lodgers who
died in her house or shortly after they moved out, within the past eight
years.

FULL
TEXT (Article 7 of 9): The “Old Gray Witch of Medina Street” sits in her tiny room in the
Michigan House of Correction at Plymouth. Imprisoned fear life, far from her
native hills of Hungary, she talks to no one. All through the past Winter she
was silent, shunned and feared by her fellow-prisoners. Even now seeing from
her window the trees budding and the grass turning green, just as the Magyar
slopes came to life in the Spring in her native town of Sarud, she keeps a
seemingly mystic vigil, her strange eyes fixed upon objects which do not exist.

Perhaps
it is just as well for her that things beyond her window panes do not intrigue
her, for by the terms of her sentence she will never again be nearer them than,
she is now. Twelve men died, tragically in hear house; three were suicides. And
the other nine? In charging the “witch” with murder, the State decided to
concentrate on the case of Stephen Mak, the twelfth man to die.

It
was last August 21st.

In
the front yard of her home on Medina Street in the Hungarian colony of Detroit,
11-year-old Marie Chevalia was playing. All morning she had been making mud
pies.

It
was a warm day, but the air was heavy, and dull smoke from surrounding
factories resisted the sunlight. Against this background of haze; the house
directly across the street from the yard where little Marie was playing looked
somewhat ghostly.

The
reason, perhaps, lay in the legends of Medina Street.

Almost
from her cradle days, little Marie Chevalia had heard people say strange things
about that house and its inmates.

“Behind
those filmy curtains,” Medina Street mothers told their, .children when family
circles were gathered around the hearths, “stalks a bad witch-woman. Her name
is Mrs. Rose Veres. She bewitches factory men, they go to live in her house,
and in the cellar the witch-woman brews potions. She has the Evil Eye. When she
looks at these men, they have to do when she tells them. They want to go away,
but they can’t. She bewitches them. Then they die.

“She
was born with a full set of teeth and a veil, and if she wants she can change
herself into a wolf or a hare.”

In
the Old World, among the Magyrs, in the Hungarian hills whence most of these
people had come, so-called witches were common. Other people didn’t have to
believe in them if they preferred not to, but all the cynical sophistication in
the world couldn’t take the vampires and other evil spirits out of the darkness
which descended upon Sarud and Nagyrev every night.

These
people knew. They had seen the vampires. They had seen the wolf-men and the
wolf-women and beard their blood-curdling cries whenever anyone in the village
died.

So
Mrs. Veres, it was clear, was a “witch,” even though she lived in Detroit, in
the United States of America.

Why,
many times she had been seen growling about the alleys at might, garbed in her
long flowing garments of black flannel, a cape tucked tightly about her stooped
shoulders and her hair covered by a lace boudoir cap.

On
such occasions it was considered unsafe to be abroad in the darkness. And when
the word would go out that “The Witch of Medina Street” was on a nocturnal
prowl, every door in the neighborhood would be locked and double-barreled, and
every shade drawn.

So
little Marie Chevalia, as she fashioned her mud-pies last August 21st,
was glad that she was in her own yard, glad that it was daylight, glad that she
was in her own yard, glad that her Mamma and Papa had warned her against the
bad witch.

Soon,
as Marie watched, Mrs. Veres stopped out from behind the front door. Marie
dropped her mud pies and stared.

Mrs.
Veres, her net boudoir cap on her head, descended the steps and spoke a few
words in low tones to John Walker, a colored man who had been sprinkling the
lawn. Walker was one of Mrs. Veres’s boarders, and occupied an attic room. At
the “witch’s” direction, he dropped the hose and retired to the cellar to shut
off the water and perform some other duties.

As
soon as Walker had disappeared’ behind the house, little Marie saw Mrs. Veres
pick up a long ladder and place it against the side of the house. Then,
clutching her skirt, beneath which she was accustomed to wear five or six
petticoats, the “Old Gray Witch of Medina Street” walked back into her house
and closed the door behind her.

Transfixed,
by vague fears and a very definite curiosity, Marie remained, wide-eyed,
squatting over her mud pies. Probably because she was a member of the more
curious sex, little Marie’s curiosity was stronger than her fear. That is why
she was later able to recount the entire drama as it unfolded before her young
eyes.

Presently
an old man emerged from the “witch-house.” He was unsteady on his feet. He was
carrying a small box and a hammer. Marie recognized him as Stephen Mak, one of
Mrs. Veres’s boarders. He walked toward the ladder and put a foot on it.

Hesitantly
he climbed, step by step. At the top he paused to lay his hammer and box on the
ledge. Then he opened the window, pulled himself partially through and sat on
the sill. For a full minute he remained in that position – then before the
watchful eyes of little Marie, be suddenly disappeared.

George
Halasz, ashort, swarthy man who lived nearby, was strolling along
Medina Street. Up to this point, he had seen nothing unusual. From the sidewalk
he called once or twice for Mike Ludd, a friend who boarded at the Veres house.
Receiving no immediate reply, Halasz leaned against a tree and started rolling
a cigarette.

A
moment later Walker returned from the basement, rear, and began walking toward
the street. He was almost directly below the attic window when a box of nails
dropped in front
of him; then a hammer thudded. He raised his hands above his head and drew
back, then looked up. As he looked, the body of Stephen Mak hurtled through the
attic window head-first, crashed against the side of the house next door and
plunged headlong tothe
ground.

Walker
raced to the back door and shouted loudly for Mrs. Veres. George Halasz removed
his newly rolled cigarette from his mouth and looked on in amazement.

Marie
Chevalia screamed and ran into her house.

Marie’s
screams aroused the neighborhood and quickly a crowd gathered around the Veres
home. Its gong clanging, an ambulance swung into Medina Street, and fifty-five
minutes later the ‘Widow Veres” her face noticeably dirty and her head covered
with cobwebs, calmly and inquiringly entered her yard from the alley beyond.
Mak was taken t» the Detroit Receiving Hospital, where he died two days later.

Mak’s
death
went into the preliminary official reports as an accident. Mrs. Veres
told police that she had asked him to fix the window, and that he had
presumably
fallen because of his age and infirm condition. At the time, she
explained, she
had been shopping, and her elder son, William, was at a movie. Walker
corroborated this story. Police were not suspicious. Mrs. Veres’s
reputation as
a “witch” was not taken seriously beyond Medina Street.

But
rumoxs began, to get around. Mak was the twelfth man to die prematurely after a
residence in the Veres house. The first was Veres himself. The. rest were
boarders. And little Marie Chevalia kept telling her mama that “the witch
killed Mr. Mak. I saw her face in the window.” George Halasz was quite sure of
that, too.

Then
it was discovered that the window Mak went up to fix needed no fixing; that he
wore shoes when he went up and none when he came down,that he had told
neighbors he was afraid of Mrs. Veres and was sure that she was going to kill
him; that there were marks on his head which looked like blows; and something
in his stomach which might not be just liquor.

It
was revealed, too, that on the morning of Mak’s death Mrs. Veres had cut a hole
in the attic partition through which aman’s body, might drawn, that
that she had offered Walter $500 to “keep his mouth shut” about his suspicions.

Officials
of insurance companies volunteered the information that Mrs. Veres had a $5,000
policy on Mak’s life, double indemnity in case of accidental death—and that she
was; still trying to make collections on policies issued to her on the lives of
dead former boarders. It was revealed, too, that she owed $1,000 to her
next-door neighbor, Aaron Freed, and had promised to pay him “as soon as I
collect some insurance money.” Police soon found a trunk containing over
seventy-five policies taken out by Mrs. Veres since she moved to Detroit.

William,
her elder son, had testified that he was, at a movie at the time of Mak’s
“fall.” But John Veres, the widow’s younger son, frankly told detectives
another version.

“Bill
told me to say he was at the Grand Theatre,” John told officers. “But he
wasn’t. He was at home with Mother.”

William
Veres was destined to share his mother’s fate. He, too, received a life
sentence, in spite of his youth. Old Mrs. Veres sits motionless in the House of
Correction. ‘Her eyes’ seem fixed upon objects.

FULL TEXT (Article 7 of 8): At lost
relentless justice has been meted out to America’s most cold-blooded woman
killer – Mrs. Rose Veres, known as the Witch of Delray. She was responsible for
the deaths of 12 lodgers – simple Hungarians whose lives she had insured.

FREEDOM’S door has been slammed on
the Witch of Delray.

The air she breathes for the rest of
her days must be screened through prison bars.

There will be no recapture of the
years when she roamed the streets of Detroit, frightening children and killing
men.

The Witch of Delray, who actually is
Mrs. Rose Veres, murdered for profit, which is why she was sentenced to life
imprisonment in Michigan.

For a time, while lawyers were
fighting desperately for a new trial for her, it looked as though she might be
free again. But now Recorder’s Judge John J. Maher, at Detroit, has denied her
appeal.

Mrs. Veres made a good thing of being
a witch. She got away with it for seven years, during which time she became a
legendary figure in black, and by the time the law caught up with her the
number of her victims was reckoned at 12. Her bank-deposits for the period
totalled £23,000.

DASTARDLY PLAN

She worked out a simple plan for
living by the death of others. She took a rooming house in the Delray section
of Detroit, where most of her lodgers were, like herself, Hungarian born. They
were simple folk and Mrs. Veres volunteered to look after their money. At the
same time she insured their lives.

When police got interested in the
goings-on in her home they discovered 75 insurance policies on her boarders, in
all of which she was the beneficiary. She had a reason why.

“I kept insurance policies on most of
my boarders,” she said, “because that is the way my people do. We want a good
funeral. There must be flowers and lodge members. I gave everyone a fine
funeral.”

The police thought too many fine
funerals were being held at the frame dwelling on Medina-street.

ACCIDENTS FAKED

They became curious when Steven Mak,
68, tumbled from a ladder out side the Veres household and died of a fractured
skull. They began asking questions and soon discovered he was the 12th man to
die at the Medina-street house since September 21, 1924, when Steven Sebastian
suffered what was described on the death certificate as a fatal cerebral
haemorrhage.

After a little inquiring in the
neighborhood, detectives found Marie Chevalia, 11, who was making mudpies
outside her home when Mak fell. “I saw Mr. Mak go up the ladder,” she said.
“Mrs. Veres was holding it for him at the attic window. He was right at the attic
window. He swayed and moaned, as if he was sick.”

Her story spun a web around the Witch
of Delray when she added:

“While he was falling, Mrs. Veres and
William (her son) poked their heads out of the window.”

Yes, that was right, Mrs. Veres remembered. She had asked Mak to repair a window. But the police said the window
didn’t need repairs.

Then there was the story of John
Walker. Mrs. Veres, he said, told him to water the ground where the ladder
rested, and the Witch herself placed it on the slippery clay.

And there was £2000 insurance on
Mak’s life.

A jury believed that Mrs. Veres and
her son pushed Mak to death and returned a verdict that provided the maximum
penalty under Michigan law for both – life imprisonment.

Responsibility for the 11 other deaths
wasn’t proved against Mrs. Veres. But the police discovered many strange
circumstances as they delved into her dusty past.

They learned that her husband, Gabor,
and Laszlo Toth, a boarder, were working on a car in the Veres garage one day
in 1927 when suddenly the door slammed. Both died of carbon monoxide poisoning
generated by the automobile exhaust.

EIGHT MEN DIED

They heard about men whose names were
known as John Nordal, Balit Peterman, Gabor Feges, Steven Faish, Alex Porczio,
Berni Kalo, John Sokivon and John Coccardi. All of them slept on wall-lined
cots in the dirt floored cellar.

All of them had casks of wine between
their beds. All of them died. Some said their deaths were caused by lye in the
wine.

While all these things were happening,
Mrs. Veres was becoming known around the neighborhood as a sinister character.

The Detroit district in which she
lived was mainly populated by native born Hungarians – simplefolk who still retained many of the
customs and beliefs of the old country.

To them werewolves, human vampires
and witches were very real beings – beings that could do harm to innocent
people who crossed their path.

BRANDED A WITCH

So it is not surprising that locally
the notorious Mrs. Veres should be looked upon by these people as a witch.

That when she appeared, the pious
people should devoutly cross themselves for fear of the evil eye.

Some said she was born with a full
set of teeth and a veil. And some said:

“If she wants, she can change her
self into a wolf or a hare.”

That’s how she became the Witch of
Delray and why she was feared by both adults and children.

Although prison claims her, her spell
continues.

Almost two years after she was gaoled
John Kampfl, one of her basement lodgers, cut his throat. It was not a critical
wound. Doctors said he would recover.

“No,” he said. “The Witch cast her
evil eye on me.”

The next morning he died, which
probably isn’t the reason the courts refused her a new trial.

But who knows?

Mrs. Rose Veres murdered ruthlessly
for profit while she was becoming known as the Witch of Delray?

FULL TEXT (Article 9 of 9): Detroit, Mich., Dec. 10 – The
“witch of Delray,” central figure 13 years ago in a murder trial which
endedin her conviction and a life
sentence after bizarre testimony linking her to 11 other deaths, was a free
woman tonight by reason of a “not guilty” verdict in a belated retrial.

She is Mrs. Rose Veres, now 64, who for many years kept a
rooming house and kept a rooming house was a two story frame building in what
was formerly the village of Delray. This community, made up for the most part
of Hungarian and middle European immigrants, is now part of Detroit.

~ Son Convicted, Too ~

At the retrial a jury of eight men and four women took eight
hours to vote an acquittal for the widely known “which,” who was convicted
originally with her son, William, of first degree murder for killing Stephen
Mack, a roomer, by pushing him out an attic window.

Mrs. Veres and her son served 13 years of their life
sentences and recently won new trials on a Supreme court ruling that their
convictions were invalid because of the absence from the courtroom of the
presiding judge when the verdict was returned.

~ Courtroom is Packed. ~

When the new trials were ordered, prosecuting authorities
released William Veres to stand trial again. The retrial began Nov. 26 before
Recorder’s Judge Paul E. Krause, and each day’s session has been in a courtroom
packed with present and former Delray neighbors and residents. Mrs. Veres
speaks no English and testified thru an interpreter.

Evidence was produced at both trials that Mrs. Veres’
rooming house had the local reputation of a “house of dreath” because of the
deaths there of 11 other persons other than Mack between 1924 and 1931.
Children feared her, it was said, because of her long hair and reported
“baleful eye,” and the name “witch of Delray” was applied to her.

When Mack died from a fall from Mrs. Veres’ attick window he
had a $4,000 insurance policy, of which Mrs. Veres was the benedficiary. Police
later found 75 insurance policies in the names of roomers.

[“’Baleful Eyed Witch’ Is Free After 13 Years – Wins In New
Trial Over Old Death Case,” Chicago Tribune (Il.), Dec. 11, 1945, p. 5]

***

EXCERPT: It had been the custom each time one of her roomers
died to have photographs made of the funeral showing her giving the corpse a
final embrace. [Curtis Haseltine, “Murder for Money – Case of Delray’s ‘Witch’
Up Again,” The Detroit Free Press, Aug. 27, 1944, Magazine Section, p. 7]

Monday, February 22, 2016

FULL
TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Mrs. Grinder, the Pittsburgh prisoner, has bean
convicted the first degree. On the announcement of the jury’s verdict, on
Saturday, she remained, to all appearances, perfectly unmoved and unconcerned.
Her case is one of the more singular [in the history] of crime. She seemed actuated
with a desire to poison people merely for the sake of doing so, having no
pecuniary or revengeful motive for making away with her victims. She would
volunteer to become a nurse accidentally came in and obstructed nor operation,
says the Pittsburg Gazette, she grew jealous and got them out of the way as
soon as possible, generally with a dose into poison not quite sufficient to
kill instantly. It seems to have been no part of her plan to kill any one
outright, as that deprived her of the luxury of witnessing the tortures which
accompany slow poisoning, and hence her doses were limited, and intended to be
cumulative. It is to this fact that many of her victims escaped with life,
circumstances having intervened to put them beyond her reach before she had
time, according to her plan, to complete their destruction.

[Untitled,
The Cambridge City Journal (In.), Nov. 9, 1865, p. 2]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): The Troy “Times” contains the following
account of Mrs. Martha Grinder, the poisoner, whose sufferings on the
gallows, owing to an insufficient drop, and the faulty arrangement of
the fatal noose, were terrible to witness: “Mrs. Martha Grinder, who was
executed in Pittsburg on Friday last, will stand out as one of the most
noted criminals of the world. She was professedly a religious woman,
and of kind and agreeable manners, and while manifesting a tender and
affectionate interest in her victims, was constantly dosing them with
poison. Her confession, just before she was led to the scaffold,
discloses some of the horrid deeds she had perpetrated, and confirms the
testimony upon which she was convicted.

It appears that Mrs.
Grinder, in June last, began the systematic poisoning of an
acquaintance, a Mrs. Mary Caroline Caruthers, who, with her husband, had
been visiting at her house. Both the latter were subjected to her
attempts; but the husband succeed in surviving the effects of the
poison. It was his evidence on the trial which afforded the most
convincing proof of Mrs. Grinder's guilt. The poison, which the medical
autopsy revealed to be arsenic and antimony, was administered in coffee
during a period extending over five weeks, or until the first day of
August, when the victim died. The husband objected to the metallic taste
of the coffee, but still was unsuspicious of any crime, and so was the
physician. At length Mr. C. had his suspicions aroused by other facts,
that his wife had been foully dealt with, and, accordingly, on the 25th
of August last, he preferred the necessary complaint against Mrs. G. who
was taken into custody. The other facts alluded to were of a most
startling nature, and reveal the culprit in the light of a most wantonly
cruel monster.

The death of Mrs. Caruthers caused an
investigation of circumstances which, in their cursory occurrence, they
had not received, and though the particular crime mentioned above was
the only one which the prosecuting attorney saw fit to arraign her,
there are fearful histories in her record of guilt. At the time referred
to the unusual number of deaths which had taken place at her house, or
among her acquaintances, was remarked. Samuel Grinder, her
brother-in-law, after his return from the war, was attacked like the
other victims, and died in great agony. A little child, left to her
care, as also her own child; a domestic, Jane R. Buchanan; Mrs.
Caruthers and her sister, Mrs. J. M. Johnston, had all died in the same
mysterious manner.

Her motive is a mystery. Money does not appear
to have been the incentive, though previously, hearing that a rich
relative had left a large property to her child, she played out the
Burdell-Cunningham role, and was detected. A jury of physicians
pronounced her not insane. Previous to her execution she confessed to
the poisoning of Mrs. Caruthers and Miss Buchanan, but denied the other
charges. She was born in 1833, married at the age of nineteen, at
Louisville, Ky., and removed to Louisville about six years ago. Her
horrid sufferings on her execution have been well described.

Pittsburg’s arch murderess slew her victims for the pleasure
of seeing them die. She planned her work with deadly patience, and thought no
labor too hard that brought to her the chance of seeing some unsuspecting man,
woman or child, writing in the horrible agony of dissolution, brought about by
the poison she had administered.

LIKED TO SEE SUFFERING

There was not the slightest motive of gain or animosity in
any of her murders. She killed them, and admitted so at the last, simply for
the love of taking life, and of seeing suffering.

She was an expert in administering the poison, her skill no
doubt being gained by her long practice, and she graduated her doses so as to
cause her helpless victims the greatest and most protracted suffering. Their
deaths were always, it is said by persons who remember, of a most horrible character,
enough to move a heart of stone.

• • • • • •

Her confession was a remarkable revelation of human
depravity. She had become obsessed with the liking for scenes of moral agony,
and her mania went even farther, making her revel in coming into contact with
dead bodies, which she loved to handle and prepare for burial.

In the early stages of this monomania she tried to satisfy
her cravings of bereavement, and by assisting in bathing and dressing the
remains. These natural deaths came too infrequently to satisfy her, however, so
she desperately started out to manufacture funerals by supplying the dead
bodies.

A different listing of the pamphlet gives a different title
and page count:

The Grinder poisoning
case : the trial of Martha Grinder, for the murder of Mrs. Mary Caroline
Carothers, on the 1st of August, 1865 : being a full and complete history of
this important case. Pittsburgh, Pa. : Published by John P. Hunt & Co.,
[1865 or 1866?], 36 pages

EXCERPT: There was also evidence to show that Mrs. Grinder
had poisoned the family of Mrs. Marguerite Smith, who lived next door to Mrs.
Caruthers, by a bowl of soup. The family was composed of the mother and six
children, all of whom but one of the soup, and here, as before, all who eat
were immediately taken sick, one, a child, dying.

Pittsburg’s arch murderess slew her victims for the pleasure
of seeing them die. She planned her work with deadly patience, and thought no
labor too hard that brought to her the chance of seeing some unsuspecting man,
woman or child, writing in the horrible agony of dissolution, brought about by
the poison she had administered.

LIKED TO SEE SUFFERING

There was not the slightest motive of gain or animosity in
any of her murders. She killed them, and admitted so at the last, simply for
the love of taking life, and of seeing suffering.

She was an expert in administering the poison, her skill no
doubt being gained by her long practice, and she graduated her doses so as to
cause her helpless victims the greatest and most protracted suffering. Their deaths
were always, it is said by persons who remember, of a most horrible character,
enough to move a heart of stone.

• • • • • •

Her confession was a remarkable revelation of human
depravity. She had become obsessed with the liking for scenes of moral agony,
and her mania went even farther, making her revel in coming into contact with
dead bodies, which she loved to handle and prepare for burial.

In the early stages of this monomania she tried to satisfy
her cravings of bereavement, and by assisting in bathing and dressing the
remains. These natural deaths came too infrequently to satisfy her, however, so
she desperately started out to manufacture funerals by supplying the dead
bodies.

A different listing of the pamphlet gives a different title
and page count:

The Grinder poisoning
case : the trial of Martha Grinder, for the murder of Mrs. Mary Caroline
Carothers, on the 1st of August, 1865 : being a full and complete history of
this important case. Pittsburgh, Pa. : Published by John P. Hunt & Co.,
[1865 or 1866?], 36 pages

***

EXCERPT: On the 15th of September the body of
Samuel Grinder was exhumed, having been buried at Leechburg. A subsequent
analysis showed that he had died from poison. He was a soldier, and was home on
furlough, during which time he visited his brother George, and while there was
poisoned. Before he died he said to his brother, “She [Martha Grinder] has
poisoned me, and will poison the whole Grinder family.”

FULL TEXT: Pittsburg can claim the unwelcome distinction of
having produced one of the most horrifying types of female poisoner that ever
darkened the pages of criminal records.

In Martha Grinder, who was hanged in the Allegheny county
jail yard. January 19, 1866, there was revealed one of the most fiendish
monomaniacs since the time of the unthinkable Borgias.

Mrs. Grinder’s case has nothing in common with the Schenk
poisoning, save in the fact that she used arsenic, which, it is alleged, was
administered to the millionaire pork packer by his wife, who years ago worked
as a domestic for several families in her husband’s native town.

If Mrs. Grinder had perpetrated her crimes in these times of
close communication between every corner of the world, the whole story would
still be talked about. But it had all happened almost 44 years ago, in the
infancy of telegraphy, and it has been forgotten years ago in all its
disgusting details, by everyone except the very few who had occasion to come into
touch with case in one capacity or another.

~ LIKED TO SEE SUFFERING. ~

There was not the slightest motive of gain or animosity in
any of her murders. She killed them, and admitted so at the last, simply for
the love of taking life, and of seeing suffering.

Martha Grinder indulged this frightful mania until she had
caused the death of about a dozen people. Then, and not till then, did
suspicion raise its eye to her. Suspicion, once directed against her,
overwhelming circumstantial evidence piled up, although at first it was thought
that she was absolutely innocent.

Mrs. Grinder lived in the old Ninth ward, and was regarded
by her neighbors as an estimable and most kindhearted person.

One of her predominating characteristics was her keen
sympathy for bereaved families. In cases of sickness she was always among the
first to volunteer her services as nurse, and she could always be relied on to
assist in the neighborly task, which was commonly practiced in those days, of “laying
out” the body. There was seldom a funeral at which she was not conspicuous
among the mourners, and the family which death had robbed of a father, mother
or child, always felt a certain amount of comfort in the acknowledge that Mrs.
Grinder felt for them.

For several years this went on, and the sympathetic, helpful
Mrs. Grinder was often employed in these melancholy duties, not as a paid
attendant, but as a kind, big-hearted friend. At last, however, it was noted
that almost invariably when Mrs. Grinder had anything to do with a case of sickness,
the patient died, and it gradually was observed that the deaths were
suspiciously similar.

~ REVRLATION OF DEPRAVITY. ~

It is all a matter of record now, how she was arrested and
formally charged with murder in October, 1865, and found guilty of an almost
impossible degree of unnatural crime on October 28 of the of the same year. She
was sentenced to death November 25 and executed the following January.

Her confession was a remarkable revelation of human
depravity. She had become obsessed with the liking of scenes of moral agony,
and her mania went even father, making her revel in coming into contact with
dead bodies, which she loved to handle and prepare for burial.

In the early stages of this momomania she tried to satisfy
her cravings by always being on hand in cases of bereavement, and by assisting
in bathing and dressing the remains. These natural deaths came too infrequently
to satisfy her, however, so she deliberately started out to manufacture
funerals by supplying the dead bodies.

She was by no means an educated woman, but she knew that
arsenic was a deadly poison, and she decided to make that her agent of death.

In the 60’s it was not nearly so difficult to obtain poisonous
drugs, and chemicals as it is now, and she was able to provide herself with an
abundance of arsenic. To be ready for an emergency she carried arsenic loose in
the deep pocket which women used to wear in their dresses. In addition she kept
a liberal supply of it at home.

This fiend in human guise made no distinction in choosing
her prey. Round-faced, happy childhood never awoke a tremor of pity in her breast.
The strong, full-blooded man, working happily for the wife and family he loved
seemed just as proper a subject for her venomous care as did the white hatred,
feeble old men and woman, totering to the grave [sic]. One and all, old and
young, she killed without mercy, simply to gloat at them as their horrible
sufferings convulsed them until life was extinct.

~ POWDERED ARSENIC ON FOOD. ~

Should a child, for instance, contract any of the simple
maladies of childhood, Mrs. Grinder on hearing of it, would hurry to the house
and ask if she could not do something to help.

“I know you are busy without having to take care of this
poor little thing, she would say to the hardworking mother, for it was a poor,
hardworking section of this city, “and you know I have little to do at home.
Let me help you, I’ll nurse him, while you do the house work, cook you
something to eat, and look after the house, it’ll be a pleasure to me.”

In the large majority of cases, this neighborly offer was
taken advantage of, and the murderess was thereupon installed in the house.
From her coming, the patient’s doom was sealed.

Mrs. Grinder, if she was in the sick room, was a model
nurse, faithfully carrying out the attending physician’s orders, and giving the
medicine regularly, but in addition she always dropped in a little pinch of
arsenic on food, mixing it in the butter with which she spread the hot toast,
dissolving a few particles of it in the milk or tea, or sprinkling it on the
meats or in the soups.

It was the same when adults fell sick. It was patient
happened to be the housewife, Mrs. Grinder’s kindly offer always eagerly
accepted by the distressed husband. If the man of the house fell sick. Mrs.
Grinder’s offer to help the overworked wife was just as welcome. She was an
accomplished actress, and hypocritical to a degree. Her kind words and acts were
as highly prized as her bustling eagerness to help the work. More than that,
she proved herself a friend in need, by purchasing delicacies and expensive
medicines with money of her own.

She was an expert in administering the poison, her skill no
doubt being gained by her long practice, and she graduated her doses so as to
cause her helpless victims the greatest and most protracted suffering. Their
deaths were always, it is said by persons who remember, of a most horrible
character, enough to move a heart of stone.

~ HER VIGOROUS DEFENSE. ~

They failed absolutely to bring her to repentance and had she
not finally been detected, she would probably have continued her murderous
career many years longer.

She retained counsel, and made a vigorous legal fight for
her life, at first protesting her innocence. The defense was able, and every
means was availed of to secure her acquittal, the power of challenge of jurors
being exercised to the extent that the existing panel was ordered by the court
to bring in 10 additional talesman, from which a jury was finally selected.

James P. Sterrett was the president judge, Judges Thomas
Mellon and E. H. Stowe being also on the bench. The jury soon found a verdict
of “Guilty of murder of the first degree.”

The court record thus describes the close of this famous
trial:

“John M. Kirkpatrick,
Esq., moved that the court pronounce judgment against her, and upon this it is
forthwith demanded of the said Martha Grinder, the prisoner at the bar, if she
has anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced against her,
who nothing further says unless as before she had said, whereupon the court
pronounced against her, who nothing further says unless as before she had said,
whereupon the court judgment as follows: “The sentence of the law is that you,
Martha Grinder, the prisoner at the bar, be taken hence to the jail of
Allegheny county, whence you came, and thence to the place of execution, and
that you are dead, and may God in His infinite goodness, have mercy upon your
soul.”

The final record in the gruesome case is the affidavit of
Sheriff John H. Stewart, died January 20, 1866, setting forth that in pursuance
of the warrant of the governor he did on the 19th day of January,
1866, execute Martha Grinder in the jail yard of Allegheny county.

STATEMENT OF JAMES A. CARUTHERS – In June last I resided in
Gray’s Alley, Allegheny City, in an adjoining house to Mrs. Grinder, and my
wife’s health up to the 27th day of that month was good—On the evening of the
27th she was invited to take tea with the Grinder family, by Mrs. G. and while
at the table eat some peaches and cream. On her return home she was taken
suddenly ill, and at nine o’clock was much worse. At twelve she was seized with
violent vomiting, purging, nausea at the mouth, and headache. These symptoms
continued two hours, rendering her prostrate and weak; she also complained of
great thirst. At daylight she requested me to go for Dr. Irish, which I did,
and then went to my work. About eleven o’clock I returned home and found my
wife still in bed, but somewhat better, gave her some water to quench her
thirst, cooked my dinner and returned to the store. In the evening she was
worse and she continued bad all night.—Went to the store in the morning and
returned at eleven o’clock. My wife complained of being hungry, and requested
me to make some rice soup. Went down to the kitchen and kindled a fire, and
while so engaged Mrs. Grinder came in and said she had filled the kettle and
tried to make a fire, but it would not burn. I made the soup and a pot of tea,
and when it was ready my wife came downstairs and partook of the soup quite
heartily, after which she returned to her room and I went to the store. About
two o’clock Mrs. Grinder came to the store and said my wife was quite sick
again. I hurried home and found her affected precisely as she had been in the
first attack. Dr. Irish came and said she was poisoned. On Friday morning Mrs.
Grinder brought in some coffee, toasted bread and crackers which my wife
partook of and was soon after taken with vomiting, spasmodic affection of the
throat and burning at the stomach. At noon Mrs. Grinder brought another lot of
crackers, coffee and toast, of which my wife eat sparingly, and in twenty
minutes after was seized with the old symptoms.